Overview

This package contains launch files for using OpenNI-compliant devices such as the Microsoft Kinect in ROS. It creates a nodelet graph to transform raw data from the device driver into point clouds, disparity images, and other products suitable for processing and visualization.

Quick start

Launch the OpenNI driver. This will launch the full constellation of nodelets:

Set the Fixed Frame (top left of rviz window) to /camera_depth_optical_frame.

Add a PointCloud2 display, and set the topic to /camera/depth/points. Turning the background to light gray can help with viewing. This is the unregistered point cloud in the frame of the depth (IR) camera. It is not matched with the RGB camera images.

Alternatively you can view the disparity image:

rosrun image_view disparity_view image:=/camera/depth/disparity

Now let's look at a registered point cloud, aligned with the RGB data. Open the dynamic reconfigure GUI:

rosrun rqt_reconfigure rqt_reconfigure

And select /camera/driver from the drop-down menu. Enable the depth_registration checkbox.

Now go back to rviz, and change your PointCloud2 topic to /camera/depth_registered/points. Set Color Transformer to RGB8. You should see a color, 3D point cloud of your scene.

Error during launch

During the launch above, you might encounter the following error:

[ERROR] [1351028964.484342461]: Tried to advertise a service that is already advertised in this node [/camera/depth_registered/image_rect_raw/compressedDepth/set_parameters]
[ERROR] [1351028964.489915028]: Tried to advertise a service that is already advertised in this node [/camera/depth_registered/image_rect_raw/compressed/set_parameters]
[ERROR] [1351028964.495383139]: Tried to advertise a service that is already advertised in this node [/camera/depth_registered/image_rect_raw/theora/set_parameters]

Registration

The raw depth image from OpenNI is published in camera/depth_registered instead.

If OpenNI registration is disabled and you have calibrated the cameras to each other:

camera/depth_registered/image_raw is computed from camera/depth/image_raw using the camera instrinsics and transform between them.

Both registered and unregistered depth outputs are published.

This will cost more CPU cycles, since the registration has to be done in software.

Launch files

openni.launch

Launches in one process the device driver and many processing nodelets for turning the raw RGB and depth images into useful products, such as point clouds. Provides default tf tree linking the RGB and depth cameras.

Arguments

camera (string, default: camera)

Descriptive name for your device. All published topics are pushed down into the <camera> namespace, and this also affects tf frame ids and some node names. If you are using multiple cameras, use this argument to disambiguate them.

Calibration URL for the RGB camera. By default, looks in your ROS home directory for calibration identified by the device serial number, e.g. $HOME/.ros/camera_info/rgb_B00367707227042B. If no calibration is found, uses a default camera model with a typical focal length and distortion unmodeled.

Calibration URL for the IR/depth camera. By default, looks in your ROS home directory for calibration identified by the device serial number, e.g. $HOME/.ros/camera_info/depth_B00367707227042B. If no calibration is found, uses a default camera model with the focal length reported by OpenNI and distortion unmodeled.

depth_registration (bool, default: false)

If true, use OpenNI's factory-calibrated depth->RGB registration.

load_driver (bool, default: true)

If true, load the OpenNI device driver. Set to false if raw data is provided by another source, e.g. bag file playback.

tf frames

rgb_frame_id (string, default: /<camera>_rgb_optical_frame)

The tf frame id of the RGB camera.

depth_frame_id (string, default: /<camera>_depth_optical_frame)

The tf frame id of the IR camera.

publish_tf (bool, default: true)

If true, publish the default (uncalibrated) tf tree. Set to false if extrinsics are provided by another source, e.g. calibration or bag file playback.

Remapping

rgb (string, default: rgb)

Remap the rgb namespace.

ir (string, default: ir)

Remap the ir namespace.

depth (string, default: depth)

Remap the depth namespace.

depth_registered (string, default: depth_registered)

Remap the depth_registered namespace.

projector (string, default: projector)

Remap the projector namespace.

Launch configuration

debug (bool, default: false)

If true, launches nodelet manager in GDB for debugging.

respawn (bool, default: false)

If true, enables bond topics between nodelet loaders and the managers and respawns any nodes (manager or loader) that die. This makes the system robust to any node dying, but the proliferation of bond topics can overwhelm introspection tools like rxgraph.

IR projector

Faked calibration for the IR projector. Identical to depth/camera_info, but with the baseline encoded in the P matrix. Stereo processing nodes can use the depth and projector infos as a left/right pair.

Provided tf Transforms

/<camera>_rgb_optical_frame → /<camera>_depth_optical_frame

Default estimate for the transform between the RGB and IR cameras. If OpenNI registration is disabled, this is used with the calibrated camera intrinsics to perform registration.

Overview

This package contains launch files for using OpenNI-compliant devices such as the Microsoft Kinect in ROS. It creates a nodelet graph to transform raw data from the device driver into point clouds, disparity images, and other products suitable for processing and visualization.

Starting with ROS Hydro, all the functionality of openni_launch has been moved to rgbd_launch, in order to allow other drivers such as libfreenect (freenect_launch) to use the same code. openni_launch itself contains 1 launch file:

Quick start

Set the Fixed Frame (top left of rviz window) to /camera_depth_optical_frame.

Add a PointCloud2 display, and set the topic to /camera/depth/points. Turning the background to light gray can help with viewing. This is the unregistered point cloud in the frame of the depth (IR) camera. It is not matched with the RGB camera images.

Alternatively you can view the disparity image:

rosrun image_view disparity_view image:=/camera/depth/disparity

Now let's look at a registered point cloud, aligned with the RGB data. Open the dynamic reconfigure GUI:

rosrun rqt_reconfigure rqt_reconfigure

And select /camera/driver from the drop-down menu. Enable the depth_registration checkbox.

Now go back to rviz, and change your PointCloud2 topic to /camera/depth_registered/points. Set Color Transformer to RGB8. You should see a color, 3D point cloud of your scene.

Launch files

openni.launch

Launches in one process the device driver and many processing nodelets for turning the raw RGB and depth images into useful products, such as point clouds. Provides default tf tree linking the RGB and depth cameras.

Arguments

This section only covers arguments that are specific to openni_launch. There are also some common arguments that can be supplied to openni.launch that are documented with rgbd_launch.

camera (string, default: camera)

Descriptive name for your device. All published topics are pushed down into the <camera> namespace, and this also affects tf frame ids and some node names. If you are using multiple cameras, use this argument to disambiguate them.

Calibration URL for the RGB camera. By default, looks in your ROS home directory for calibration identified by the device serial number, e.g. $HOME/.ros/camera_info/rgb_B00367707227042B. If no calibration is found, uses a default camera model with a typical focal length and distortion unmodeled.

Calibration URL for the IR/depth camera. By default, looks in your ROS home directory for calibration identified by the device serial number, e.g. $HOME/.ros/camera_info/depth_B00367707227042B. If no calibration is found, uses a default camera model with the focal length reported by OpenNI and distortion unmodeled.

depth_registration (bool, default: false)

If true, use OpenNI's factory-calibrated depth->RGB registration.

load_driver (bool, default: true)

If true, load the OpenNI device driver. Set to false if raw data is provided by another source, e.g. bag file playback.

tf frames

rgb_frame_id (string, default: /<camera>_rgb_optical_frame)

The tf frame id of the RGB camera.

depth_frame_id (string, default: /<camera>_depth_optical_frame)

The tf frame id of the IR camera.

publish_tf (bool, default: true)

If true, publish the default (uncalibrated) tf tree. Set to false if extrinsics are provided by another source, e.g. calibration or bag file playback.

tf_prefix (string, default: "")

If set, this tf_prefix is prefixed to all frame ids used/generated by openni.launch

Remapping

rgb (string, default: rgb)

Remap the rgb namespace.

ir (string, default: ir)

Remap the ir namespace.

depth (string, default: depth)

Remap the depth namespace.

depth_registered (string, default: depth_registered)

Remap the depth_registered namespace.

projector (string, default: projector)

Remap the projector namespace.

Launch configuration

debug (bool, default: false)

If true, launches nodelet manager in GDB for debugging.

respawn (bool, default: false)

If true, enables bond topics between nodelet loaders and the managers and respawns any nodes (manager or loader) that die. This makes the system robust to any node dying, but the proliferation of bond topics can overwhelm introspection tools like rxgraph.

num_worker_threads (int, default: 4)

Sets the number of worker threads in the nodelet manager

This section only covers arguments that are specific to openni_launch. There are also some common arguments that can be supplied to openni.launch that are documented with rgbd_launch.